Friday, May 22, 2009

Keep Your Pitocin to Yourself!

Allow me to vent a little about the medical community. Here are the stats: I'm 38 weeks pregnant, no complications. At my check up today, the nurse practitioner suggested that I start considering induction--because, you know, it would be easier to schedule labor around my 2 year old's routine. I call bullshit. Inductions are almost standard practice these days, not because the baby is in distress or because the mama is at risk or anything like that, but because the doctor needs to keep her appointment schedule running on time. This is also why most inductions are scheduled in the early evening--so that the doctor can deliver the babies in the off-hours, thus freeing up her daytime hours to attend to her overbooked office patient load. Going into natural labor just isn't time-efficient.

Secondly, inductions require pitocin, which leads to very painful contractions, and very often, higher C-section rates. It's a vicious cycle, and one that I want nothing to do with. I told my last doctor that I didn't want to induce, and I didn't. Thank goodness, I went into labor by 41 weeks. Anything past that and they'll practically force you to do it.

Here is my issue: I didn't go the midwife/home birth route because a) I like the idea of having an epidural available upon request, b) my insurance covers standard hospital births and I don't have cash to spare for a midwife, which is pricey. So for the moms like me, who want a hospital birth with the least amount of interventions, we're at the mercy of the medical community. If we go the home birth route, we're looking at a totally natural, drug-free birth, which while it's awesome, is not the route I'm looking to take. Why no middle road, people?

I resent today's appointment and the fear mongering that the professionals impose on us while we're hugely pregnant and in stirrups. Unless there is a clear medical reason for induction/C-section/pitocin, fuck off! Let me pre-labor and labor in peace and allow the female body to do what it is designed to do!